Life before, during, and after World War II was never easy for Berlin private detective Bernie Gunther. In Philip Kerr‘s seventh Bernie Gunther novel, “Field Gray,” Gunther himself takes the reader on a guided tour of the carnage he has witnessed, the no-way-to-win choices he has had to make, and the people who want him dead.

“Field Gray” begins in 1954 Cuba, but when Bernie is arrested by the U.S. Navy, he ends up in CIA custody undergoing enhanced interrogation about his links to the Nazis — even though Bernie is the first to proclaim how much he hated Hitler. And then there’s Erich Mielke, one of the characters Philip Kerr did not invent, whose very existence may be more threatening to Bernie than anything else.

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